What’s Your Number?

I had the pleasure of playing two rounds of golf this week at Pinehurst North Carolina with a retired dentist from the Boston area who now lectures to dentists.

Well actually I played four rounds of golf at Pinehurst, but only two with this gentleman.

The beauty of his story is that he was, or is, only sixty-four years old, and has been retired from wet-fingered dentistry since he was fifty-one years old.

And that’s not a miracle.

It’s simply because he knew his number.

Do you know your number?

He often asks dentists who attend his lectures if they know their number?

“What’s your number?”

What is your number?

What is the amount of money that you need to have saved, in cash and real estate and stocks and bonds, that will allow you to retire and live to the end of your life in a manner that you see as being comfortable?

What is that number for you?

Do you even know your number?

Do you know what your number is now?

Are you on track to reach that number?

And if so, by when?

So many dentists out there don’t know when they want to retire and with how much they need to retire at whatever lifestyle they wish to choose.

And guess where those dentists will end up?

Nowhere.

Omer Reed told me seven years ago that ninety-five percent of dentists who reach the age of sixty-five cannot afford to retire because they have not reached their magic number…. the amount of money they need to have saved in assets to fund the lifestyle that they have desired.

And so those dentists continue to keep on working.

Have you worked out what that number is for you?

I hear you say:

“Why should I have a number at all?”

And I say:

“Why not?”

You studied for all those years and you invested all that time into yourself to learn all these great skills, and then you invested in your Dental Office and your facility, and all up you’re probably starting your career from a number that’s close to negative $1.2Million….

And after all of that head start you’ve given other careers and professions, I still hear dentists say that they’re not focused on money.

I’m here to say that dentistry is a wonderful profession if you focus on the right customers out there and the right sort of dental business that you need to build to attract those customers.

And here is the secret….

Getting to your number is easy when you work out the way you need to do it.

But you have to know what your number is.

You need to be focused on achieving your number, at a specific time in your life, and not just some day.

My golfing friend retired from dentistry at age fifty-one.
I’ll be retiring from wet-fingered dentistry next month at age fifty-seven.

You owe it to yourself, for all of that time and money that you’ve invested in yourself, to set your number and then do what you need to do to reach that number.

And of course, if you need advice on how to get there, then ask for the advice.

There’s no prizes for trying to work it out on your own.

How do I earn it, and how do I save it?

We know that Dental School doesn’t teach you dental business and strategic savings and the business skills necessary to build a successful profitable business.

Don’t be part of the ninety-five percent who never get there….
You don’t need to be there.